Do Internships in Startups Lead to Employment?

We have just completed our 3rd year of partnering with technology based startups in the greater Boston area and training and connecting qualified UMass Boston students with paid internships at these companies. We also just completed our 2nd year of training UMass Boston students to launch their own startups by actually launching and evolving their own startups through live test marketing in all phases of their business with the help of mentors. A method we believe comes closest to providing an internship for someone who wants to launch their own startup.

The concept is simple. The Entrepreneur economy is very healthy and if you train students in the skills and requirements needed in a startup, they will in turn, get hired when they graduate. And this benefits the students as well as the entrepreneur economy. Our numbers, while still very much a work in progress, are below.

85 students in 89 internships and 44 companies
33 students – employed full time with internship deemed influential
25 students – still in school and internships
12 students – internships did not result in or influence employment
15 students – we don’t know results

So, I guess what we can say at this point is out of the 45 students who have graduated and we’ve been able to stay in contact with, 73% received full time employment with their internship being an influential factor. The results seem okay. We’ve learned a lot over the last 3 years and there is much we can do to improve the quality of training and preparation we provide.

Regarding students launching and evolving their own startups though live test marketing and with the assistance of mentors;

46 students – participated in this program
28 students – launched their own startups
14 startups – operational and producing revenue
17 students – interns/employees in a previously launched startup
17 previously launched startups – operational and producing revenue

In regards to these numbers above, 50% of the student based startups that were launched from scratch, are in operation today. 100% of the startups that were more mature and hiring students to help build out their businesses are in operation today. I do believe we helped these more mature startups to expand and grow, but we are by no means claiming their success is because of our program.

So, what’s next? Evolve based on what we’ve learned, improve results, and scale program. What else do you do with a startup? :)